My story last week on Littleton-raised Drayson Bowman, who helped lead the Spokane Chiefs to the Memorial Cup championship, highlighted what still is the most common route to the NHL for North American players. That’s major junior in the Canadian Hockey League, the umbrella organization over the Western, Ontario and Quebec leagues.

I’ve seen the good and the bad of major junior, with its pro-length schedules, grueling bus travel and pro-game rules. It works for many players, and it’s working for Bowman. He is a Carolina draft choice, and he likely will be starring with the Hurricanes soon.

The problem is that for every Drayson Bowman, there are many more washouts. Once they join a major-junior program, with stipends that make players ineligible for NCAA scholarships, the doors are closed to playing at U.S. colleges — for both Canadians and Americans. And that decision often is made at age 16 or 17.

In major junior, most players and their parents are certain a 15-season NHL career is right around the corner. Some are right. Most of the Avalanche stars have been major-junior products, and even if they haven’t attended a day of college, they usually have been intelligent, savvy and capable of self-education in life. I’ve never agreed that a college diploma is the only answer, or that athletes can’t pick up a book for the rest of their lives after leaving a campus without graduating because they’re as ready for the workplace as a 23-year-old leaving with an MBA.

But major-junior players not making the NHL often end up educationally short-changed, or at least behind their contemporaries. The education-on-the-fly aspects of major junior and then major-junior’s scholarship program — roughly a year of college money for each year of playing — aren’t enough. (The major-junior scholarship program, let’s just say, doesn’t match a Harvard scholarship.)

Except for the absolute elite (and Bowman appears to be among that group) or players who would have little interest in a college education under any circumstances, I still believe the best route, for most U.S.-born players especially, remains NCAA hockey.

The campus life and education are intermediate life steps, and the practices and coaching are at least a match for the extensive major-junior schedule. The NHL’s increasing preference for major junior is shameful, because it is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy (i.e., one of the reasons major junior is a better route to the NHL is because the NHL believes it is) and is funneling more players to major junior — in some instances after they bail out on NCAA programs.

Even if players leave NCAA programs early, proving themselves ready for the NHL, they have been enriched by the college experience.

Final point: It’s time for the NCAA to revisit its ban on major-junior players from sliding into NCAA programs, barring a very complicated and seldom-used appeal process.

Major-junior paychecks are minuscule and amount to stipends. And as is more obvious now than ever, the cesspool that is NCAA basketball features a “don’t-ask, don’t-tell” policy about what blue-chip prospects — even those who wouldn’t be NBA draft choices out of high school under the previous rules — have been receiving since they became teenagers as they progress through the camp-clinic-AAU chain to the college game.

Compared to that, major junior is pure amateurism.

Coaching openings.

Ten days after the Avalanche’s rehiring of Tony Granato, five head-coaching positions remain officially open — San Jose, Ottawa, Toronto, Florida and Atlanta. Also, as the Lightning’s rumored hiring of Barry Melrose points out, Tampa Bay is expected to cut loose John Tortorella as soon as the franchise’s ownership change goes through.

Former Avalanche coaches Joel Quenneville and Bob Hartley have been mentioned and are in the running for several of the jobs. Hartley would be a natural fit at Ottawa, near his hometown of Hawkesbury, and Quenneville would be a great choice for Toronto, where he began his NHL career as a player and got his start in coaching in the Leafs’ system.

A graduate of Wheat Ridge High School and the University of Colorado, Terry Frei has been named a state's sportswriter of the year six times -- three times each in Oregon and Colorado. He mainly covers college football and hockey for The Post. He's the author of seven books, including the novel "Olympic Affair" about Colorado's Glenn Morris, the 1936 Olympic decathlon champion.

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